Distance Education and Technology in a Socio-Cultural and Educational Perspective.
Notes on the Problem of Interaction in the Learning Process*

This article explores and revises literature on contributions built by various authors on distance education through the following points: How did the stages of this type of education reconfigure from technological advances to present? We reflect from a sociocultural point of view how technological advances -in response to sociocultural changes-wield turns and new ways to approach teaching and learning for distance learning education.

A descriptive overview is offered to understand technological changes that are woven from four generations of distance education. At each stage of distance education we look critically -in a general way- at components that affect processes of interaction and consequently the settings for learning. To conclude, I will focus on the latest generation of distance education to question the concept of interaction for the construction of knowledge in contemporary contexts.

*This article is an improved and extended version of previous papers written for FLACSO-Argentina (Verdún, 2010) as a postgraduate student, and another in collaboration with colleagues (Verdún, Britos and Arganarás, 2013), presented at the worktable “Development and technological innovation linked to education. Theoretical and methodological reflections”, in the framework of the First National Conference and Third Experience and Research in Distance Education and Learning Technologies at the National University of Cordoba, Argentina. Year 2013.